Invasion of the Dirt House

Having recently had an operation and being unable to clean the house it has quickly resembled a landfill site. Piles of the boy's drawings, pens without lids littering the floor, corners full of dust balls, letters scattered in different places, duplo towers towering the heights, empty dvd cases lying in wait, not to mention the state of the toilet. It's up to you if you want to use your imagination on that one.

This morning, in a desperate attempt to clean up the ever increasing chaos we engaged the services of our boys. This is a great risk. Either we will spend the whole time nagging, cajoling and eventually crying or they will throw themselves into the task wholeheartedly. It's a tricky business which requires great skill in handling.

First, we told them we needed an Army to 'invade the dirt house'. It was a difficult mission. We gave each Groundtrooper a name - "Sniper Max", "Cadet Jonah", "Private Toby" while I was "General Mum" and Jared was "Special Forces Dad". We gave each one an assignment. Each assigment was to tidy, dust and hoover one room. The rules were as follows:


No torturing the enemy.
Stay on your assigment until it is completed.
Always follow The General's instructions.

Then, we played "Eye of the Tiger" very loudly and dispatched them.

To my utter amazement, they spent 45 minutes on each room. They did it beautifully (although they would not appreciate my use of that particular word). Of course, they were over-enthusiastic with the furniture polish and now the wooden floor is hazardously slippery and the hoovering attempts left large gaps but overall The General approved their efforts.

This is such a rare occurance which took me by surprise. Usually our efforts at getting them to clean and tidy are met with moans, groans, cryings and "But I didn't make that mess"! Often I feel like the house slave. Today, they have shown me they can do it. That was their first mistake.